Glenn Beck on His Health Issues and Counting the Cost

As my colleague Michael van der Galien noted yesterday, Glenn Beck, who has for some months been experiencing a number of health issues, is taking some time off to attempt to have them properly diagnosed.

Next week on Monday and Tuesday, I am going to take time off. I’m going out West to have some testing done. I have told you before that I have been losing feeling in my hands and my feet and I have been feeling tingling in my hands and my feet, and it’s traveling up my arms and it’s just a very bizarre sensation. … I’ve told you also that I have been diagnosed with macular dystrophy, which means that I love this diagnosis I could be totally fine with eyesight for the rest of my life, or I could be blind within a year. The macular dystrophy has not progressed at all in the two months since it’s been diagnosed, but there’s something else that has also been going on. And if you’re a long time listener, you might be even be able to tell it I can just by listening to my voice now. There is something wrong with my voice, and we’re not sure what it is.

Beck was quick to knock down conspiracy theories–especially those dealing with slow poison and/or nano-bots—and his doctors seem to have ruled out stress as the root cause of his current ailments, but given the multitudes on the Left who’ve been gleefully pushing pins into his effigy for a couple of years now it is difficult to see how this very public and sustained level of vilification could not have taken a toll. Beck has said numerous times that no amount of fame can compensate for being hated by so many people or for the persistent and credible threats to him and his family that require security arrangements more appropriate for a head of state.

If any of this seems melodramatic (as to the Left, who actually stage manage the threats being responded to, it always does) imagine for a second you’re standing in front of 300,000 people, wearing a bulletproof vest “for your wife” and wondering if someone behind you–in an area you were not allowed to secure–is going to shoot you in the back before your own people can respond. That was Beck’s reality at the 8/28 rally, and, at the risk of sounding flip, my fingers would tingle a little too.